Shouldn't Everyone Be Inside, Paveando*?

This year, the last Thursday of November was a touch odd. For the first time in my life, I was not home for Thanksgiving, a holiday and time of year I always enjoy and look forward to. However, what was odd was not the fact that I was not home, but the fact that I forgot it was Thanksgiving. I forgot that all my friends back home were headed somewhere familial for the week, ready to enjoy their days off. Despite having Thanksgiving plans of my own, the fact that it actually was Thanksgiving sat somewhere at the back of my mind, still waiting for that jolt of excitement that would yank it forward. An excitement usually triggered by sitting in Logan Airport with a Starbucks coffee in hand, waiting for my delayed plane. No such excitement this year. I proceeded with life as usual on Thursday. I went to work and guzzled my daily coffee without a single thought of not being able to bake pumpkin pie this year. It wasn't until later that evening, as I was walking to Plaza Prosperidad, did the thought enter my mind. What are all these people doing outside? Shouldn't they be at home eating Thanksgiving dinner? That was when I realized I was not in the United States and the Spaniards les importa un pimiento** about Thanksgiving. Needless to say, it was a strange day. I felt a little disoriented.

The following day, one I usually spend digesting Thanksgiving dinner and then gluttonously eating the leftovers, I went to Segovia for the final group trip. Despite the chilly and rainy weather due to Segovia's mountainous location and the current time of the year, it was a marvelous day. Segovia's contributions to historical interest are the castle, which was the inspiration for Cinderella's castle, the aqueduct, the cathedral, and the church where Isabel I was crowned Queen of Castilla. The rest of Segovia consists of the same little streets and plazas--of which I will never tire--that the rest of the small Spanish towns embody.

Despite Segovia's Segovianess, the highlight of the trip was the multiple course, traditional Segovian dinner that served as a Thanksgiving subsititute for all of us Americans, struggling without a huge, loud, long meal. Except we did not get turkey; we were served cochinillo*** in the traditional Segovian style. Considering I ordered salmon because I do not eat pork, I was apprehensive about seeing a suckling pig, but the dish turned out to be a little different than the plump, crispy, porcine behemoth I had expected. The relatively small pig, with its head and appendages still intact, was flat because everything but the meat had been removed. Cochinillo is so tender that the tradition is to cut it with the edge of a plate, to demonstrate that it requires no knife, and then to break the plate to prove that the plate is ordinary. It was unusual, fascinating, and not as repulsive as I had expected. You cannot do that with salmon.

*turkeying

**don't care at all

***suckling pig